Setting Up Supplier Chat

Who uses this: Admins enable Supplier Chat in Company Settings; each user’s Create Supplier Messages and Access All Messages permissions control what they can view and send. Availability: United States only.

Supplier Chat keeps every conversation with a supplier in one shared thread your whole team can see, instead of messages buried in one rep’s phone or scattered across text and email. You can ask suppliers about inventory, pricing, and order status, and send the purchase orders you create in FieldPulse straight to them — from web or mobile. This page covers enabling Supplier Chat, setting who can use it, starting a chat, and sending purchase orders.

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Overview

Supplier Chat fixes a common problem: the siloed supplier conversation. When your parts rep texts a supplier from their own phone, nobody else can see the thread — so when they’re out, the order status, the price quote, and the back-and-forth go with them. Supplier Chat stores every supplier conversation in one place in FieldPulse, so the whole team can follow the discussion and keep a clear record. Use Supplier Chat to:

• Send purchase orders created in FieldPulse to your suppliers, on web and mobile.
• Ask suppliers questions — inventory, pricing, order status, and more.

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Supplier industries

You can chat with suppliers across these industries: Appliances, Carpet / Flooring, Doors, Electric, Equipment, Fastener, Fencing, Fire & Fabrication, Glass, Home Furnishing, HVAC, Insulation, Irrigation, Locks and Keys, Lumber, Paint, Plumbing, Pool, Rental, Retail Hardware, Roofing / Building Supplies, Specialty Construction, Steel / Metal, Stone & Concrete, Water Softening, Waterworks, and Other.

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Before you begin

• Supplier Chat is available for users in the United States only.
• You need Admin access to Company Settings to enable Supplier Chat and to set the supplier-message permissions.
• To send purchase orders through Supplier Chat, know how to create a purchase order in FieldPulse first — see How to Manage Purchase Orders.

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Step-by-step setup

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1. Enable Supplier Chat

1. In the left-hand menu, select Company Settings.
2. Select Features & Plugins.
3. Find the Supplier Chat Integration tile and select Enable.

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2. Set supplier-message permissions

Supplier Chat access is controlled by two permissions, set in Company Settings. You can grant each permission to specific users, teams, or roles, and a user’s combination of the two permissions decides what they can see and do.

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Starting a chat with a supplier

To start a chat with a supplier, select the truck icon in the navigation menu near the top right of your screen. A chat window opens in the bottom-right corner of your screen. Before you fill out any of the search fields, the window shows any existing chats you have.

1. In the chat window, enter your zip code with a Search within mile radius, and/or select an industry, to find a relevant supplier near you.
2. Select a supplier branch from the results and send your message. From there the chat works like a text thread.

A few things to know about how the shared thread behaves:

• The truck icon in the navigation menu shows a count of the messages that are unread specifically for you, and each thread in the chat window shows its own unread count.

• Read status is per person: if you read a message, it still shows as unread for other users in the chat, like a group text.
• Notifications go to everyone who has participated in the chat. If you’ve only been reading threads without sending a message, you won’t get notifications.

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Sending purchase orders via Supplier Chat

If your supplier uses Supplier Chat, you can send the purchase orders you create in FieldPulse directly to them. The purchase order is attached automatically — you pick who receives it, either by attaching it to an existing supplier chat or by searching for a new supplier and starting a chat.

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On web

1. Create your purchase order — see How to Manage Purchase Orders.
2. On the purchase order, select Send via Supplier Chat.
3. Choose the recipient: attach the purchase order to an existing supplier chat, or search for a new supplier to start a chat.

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On mobile

Supplier Chat is on the FieldPulse mobile app too. Access follows the same supplier-message permissions set in Company Settings — see User Roles and Permissions Details. To open Supplier Chat on mobile:

1. Open the app and go to Full Menu.
2. Select the Management tab.
3. Tap Supplier Chat.

To send a purchase order via Supplier Chat on mobile:

1. Create your purchase order.
2. Select the Actions button, then Send via Supplier Chat.
   

   
3. Choose the recipient: attach the purchase order to an existing supplier chat, or search for a new supplier to start a chat.

Your setup is working when Supplier Chat is enabled, a permitted teammate opens a supplier thread from the truck icon, and a purchase order you created in FieldPulse sends to the supplier with the PO attached automatically.

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Related articles

• How to Manage Purchase Orders
• User Roles and Permissions Details